


To Live, Not Just Survive

by empathieves



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: BAMF Jonathan, BAMF Nancy, BAMF Steve, Borrowed elements from Supernatural, Fix-It, Miscommunication, Monster of the Week, Multi, OT3, Oblivious Teenagers, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Roadtrip, Slow Burn, ot3: monster hunting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-11-06 09:36:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11033502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/empathieves/pseuds/empathieves
Summary: Nancy, Steve, and Jonathan hunt monsters and kick ass. Along the way, they fall in love, figure their shit out, find a way to bring Eleven back, and save Will Byers' life again. Eventually.





	1. Know Thy Enemy

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first multi-chap! :O Hopefully all goes well and I'll have the whole fic finished and published before S2 on Halloween. Hope you like!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Nancy struggles with the aftermath.

 

It wasn’t like Nancy set out to look for monsters.

It might have looked like she was – head bent over newspapers from everywhere in the state, taking notes half-feverishly with a picture of Barb happy and alive pinned to the corkboard hanging over her – but that was really just a side-effect. What she was actually looking for was signs of Eleven. Then, after she had begun to despair of finding any trace of the girl that Mike was still staunchly maintaining he hadn’t had feelings for, she’d started trying to track suspicious government activity. Unsurprisingly, they covered their tracks well enough that all she could find were vague signs. Nancy didn’t like feeling like a crackpot conspiracy theorist, but she really did _know_ that there was at least some truth to most of the stories and that wasn’t helpful.

When she couldn’t track the agencies that covered it up, she started looking for the monsters. What scared her was how _many_ things looked like they could be the work of something like the Demogorgon. She figured that they couldn’t all be interdimensional beings, so she started to research. She borrowed every book the Hawkins Library had on mythological creatures and monsters, cryptids, spirits, anything she could find. She took notes from those books like she did for her biology final. Throwing herself into school helped with the aftermath of everything, but what helped more were the notes she now had on all the things that went bump in the night. She’d never feared the dark before the Upside Down, but knowing that she could hurt the things there was useful. It meant that she was getting closer to sleeping without the light on, day by day, and that couldn’t be anything _but_ good, right?

Two months after the Demogorgon, Nancy went out and bought her own gun.

Steve was the first person who she showed the notes to. She wanted to show Jonathan too, but she figured Steve deserved to know first, considering the drawn and white look on his face every time he came to her window to find her holding her hand where it was cramping from writing all night.

He took the binder book she’d been putting them all in from her carefully, studying her face. She tried to keep it as impassive as she could, but couldn’t quite manage it. This was _important_. She could – she could help people.

He asked if he could take the binder home to read it and she nodded, and then he reached out and took her hands in his and kissed them.

“You need to take a break for a little, Nancy.”

“I don’t – “

“Just for tonight, I want you to take a break and just lie down for a while. Okay?” he said, and his voice was the same as the one he used with animals, gentling and soothing. He leaned in and kissed her forehead and she was stunned to find herself beginning to cry.

“I need to – I need to be able to save people, I can’t let it happen again, I can’t – “

“We’ll talk about it after I’ve read the notes, okay? Have you showed Jonathan yet?” Steve asked, his voice taking on the careful, almost reserved tone that he always took when he talked about Jonathan. She wasn’t sure what that tone meant – he’d bought Jonathan the camera, hadn’t he? She didn’t think that Steve disliked Jonathan, but she couldn’t tell anymore. Something in Steve had changed between the fight he’d had with Jonathan and the fight with the Demogorgon, and she wasn’t certain what that something was. He was still dorky, ridiculous Steve, but there were these moments now when he was quiet and still in a way he’d never been before. When those moments happened, she would look at him and think ‘ _This is the Steve that saved our lives. This is the Steve who couldn’t leave us.’_

“No, not yet.”

“Alright. Do you want me to pass it onto him after I’ve read it? Then in two weeks, we can regroup and talk about it. All three of us.”

She thought about them all together, the way they hadn’t been since the night they killed a monster, and there was a not unpleasant jolt in her stomach. She looked up at Barb’s photo and the feeling retreated.

“Yeah, okay.”

And then he pulled her over to the bed and got her to lie down, and he sat next to her all night. She never had to say it, but he knew she slept better now with someone awake to watch over her.

 

In the morning Steve was gone, and so was her binder. She knew she’d see him at school though, and he’d left her a note on her desk.

_I’ll talk to Jonathan on Saturday. See you in a few hours._

_I love you - S_

Like so many other things Steve did, it helped. She dressed – another thing that had changed since the Demogorgon was that she didn’t feel comfortable in her own clothes anymore. She favoured jeans and flannels now, and she knew very well what people were saying about her and Steve at school. She found it very hard to care, but she knew that Steve was having trouble with it. He didn’t like to admit that the popularity had been a comfort for him, but now that he’d essentially been ostracised by his old group it was hard to ignore how lonely he looked sometimes.

She wished she knew how to fix it without him going back to being friends with people who were genuinely dislikeable. But she didn’t know, so instead she got dressed and tied her hair back, packing her bag with swift hands and tucking the gun that she kept under her pillow at night into the hiding spot in her desk.

Breakfast was awkward, as always. Mike picked at his food; it was clearly a bad day for him, but Mom fussed over him instead of leaving it alone which just made him sullener. Dad was ignoring it all, which seemed to be what he’d decided to make his policy on the whole matter. Nancy had become increasingly aware of how emotionally distant her father was in the past few months, as well as how hard her Mom worked to pick up the slack in the actual parenting department. Not for the first time, she thought about moving out. She didn’t know how she’d do it; she didn’t have the money to. But as she looked around the kitchen, filled with bright light and unhappy people, she wished bitterly that she could be anywhere but here.

School was not better.

It had Steve, and occasionally she saw Jonathan when he came out of the darkroom, but it also had near constant reminders of Barb. Her locker was still next to Nancy’s, and they hadn’t reassigned it to anyone. So every morning Nancy would feel this kind of fleeting hope that maybe she’d be there – and of course, she never was.

It wasn’t entirely terrible. She was doing well in all of her classes. Better than well, actually. She’d completed all of the work up until the end of the year pretty much, she just hadn’t handed it in yet. It was one of the reasons why she’d been spending so much time on the binder – she didn’t need the time to study anymore. She spent most of class zoning out now, thinking about Wendigo and werewolves and interdimensional extraterrestrials. It was easier to think about them during the day. She’d feel sick and clammy with fear still, but it wasn’t nearly as bad. The Demogorgon had never attacked during the day, and the same held true of most of the other things she’d researched.

At lunch, she’d sit with Steve and ignore the looks they were getting. It had been worse just after the Demogorgon, when Steve had shown up with his face a motley of black and purple bruising and with cuts on his face where Jonathan’s knuckles had split the skin and Nancy had been with him, in her new clothes and flinching every time someone made a loud noise. Once that week she’d been in the bathroom and heard two girls from a lower grade talking about how scary she looked now. She’d tried very hard not to be viciously gratified.

She felt like a different person now – like someone had taken her in their hands and peeled away the outer layers of her personality to expose the bits of her that were steely and cold. She wondered a lot if she should be disturbed by the changes in her – if she’d become someone who she shouldn’t have, who shouldn’t have ever needed to exist.

She’d mentioned it to Steve once and he’d given her a look that somehow simultaneously said _you’re an idiot_ at the same time as saying _you should never talk about yourself that way._

“So you went through something horrible and discovered that when it comes down to it, you’re a survivor. That’s not a negative.” He’d said.

She found it hard to argue with him when he made sense like that.

The day passed. The week passed. She talked to Mike, tried to give him sisterly advice and hide that she was falling apart herself. She ignored her father and waved to Jonathan when he dropped Will off for the weekly D’n’D session. She pretended that the jolt in her stomach was something she ate, even as it happened the moment she made eye contact with Jonathan. She pretended, as always, that there was nothing there between them, even as the scar on her hand burned.

She almost managed to forget that she’d given the binder to Steve at all, until she saw the note again on her desk that Friday night and realised that he’d be talking to Jonathan about it the next day.

She didn’t sleep well that night for more reasons than just the usual.

 

 


	2. In Your Hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Steve is apprehensive.

 

Steve would have been lying if he’d said that he wasn’t apprehensive about seeing Jonathan again. They hadn’t spoken since the Monster, and Steve had permanent little scars now marking his cheekbone, his jawline, a little bump on his temple. He knew exactly how hard Jonathan could hit now when so inclined, knew that Jonathan could lay a trap for something unearthly and watch as it burned alive. And it wasn’t like he thought Jonathan was going to attack him – that would be irrational – but his brain was still having trouble coping with the fact that the space Jonathan Byers used to occupy had changed from _Creepy Poor Kid_ to _The Guy Who Killed a Monster, Who Beat Me In A Fight And Who My Girlfriend Might Be In Love With._ No, he didn’t think Jonathan would attack him, but Jonathan could _attack_ – could be something dangerous, the same way he now knew that Nancy could be, the same way he knew that he could be himself. It’s a curious thing, to be made aware that your hands can kill just as easily as caress. He doesn’t know how to feel about it.

Introspection is swiftly becoming another enemy to him.

Gathering himself, he lifted his hand and knocked at the door to the Byers house. He hasn’t been back there since that night, and he wonders distantly if there’s still a burnt patch of carpet where they set that thing on fire and watched it shriek into the night. Probably not; that’d be the first thing he would’ve fixed.

Joyce answered the door, looking healthier and far happier than when he’d last saw her, and smiled brilliantly at him. He smiled back, a little uncertain.

“Is Jonathan home?” he asked.

“Yup, he just got in about ten minutes ago. Come in, come in. Would you like some tea?” she asked while holding the door open for him. He stepped across the threshold and tried not to shiver.

“No, but thanks for offering.”

“His bedroom is just down there.”

He remembered.

There wasn’t a burnt patch on the carpet. He had mixed feelings about it.

“Steve? What are you doing here?” he heard, and he lifted his head to meet Jonathan’s eyes.

“Uh. Got some stuff to talk about. It’s to do with Nancy.” Jonathan’s back stiffened and he broke eye contact. Steve frowned.

“Oh, Jesus. Not that.” he said, and lifted the binder he’d been carrying tucked under his arm. His heart was pounding. Like, yeah, sure they needed to talk about what was between Jonathan and Nancy at _some_ point but now was not the time. It’s not like he was entirely uncomfortable with it anymore. Sure, he’d been freaked when he thought Nancy had been cheating on him, but he knew exactly what she and Jonathan had gone through together and it kind of made sense that there were feelings there considering everything. He wasn’t sure what it meant that he didn’t really mind too much that his girlfriend had feelings for another guy who obviously returned those feelings, but he wasn’t going to make it into a problem if it wasn’t one.

“What…?”

“We should probably talk inside your room, yeah?” Steve responded. He had no idea if Will was home, but he knew that he didn’t want to stress Joyce out with talk about…well, about literally everything Nancy had written about. It was pretty heavy stuff.

“Uh. Sure, okay.”

Once they were safely encloistered, Jonathan turned to him.

“What’s going on? Is Nancy okay?”

“She’s...coping. This is how she’s coping.” he said, and handed over the binder.

Jonathan took it over to the bed and sat down heavily. Steve walked over to the window for something to do while Jonathan started leafing through it.

“Are these things real?” he hears from behind him, over the sound of turning pages. Steve turns, because this is something he should probably say to Jonathan’s face.

“If it was anyone else, I’d say no. But it’s Nancy. So yeah, I think they’re real.”

“That’s all it takes for you to believe her?”

“Well, that and recent events. My scepticism isn’t as strong as it used to be.”

“Why did you want to show me this?”

“She wants to save people. I said I’d pass her research onto you and that we’d all meet up to talk about it once you’ve had time to read it properly.”

“Save people? From these things?”

“I think so.”

“I can’t just leave Hawkins. I can’t leave Will.” Jonathan said, and a slightly frantic note was surfacing in his voice.

“I’m not asking you to. I’m just asking you to read through the binder and then meet us to talk about in a week. For Nancy.” he said, and he knew that he was being manipulative by adding that last bit, but he knew how important it was to her that they both knew.

Steve was under no illusions that he had more importance than Jonathan in her mind; he’d saved them both, but he had come in after a lot had already happened. He had some idea of what had transpired between them; had some idea that they had saved each other already before he’d come in swinging with a baseball bat. It was why he didn’t question the idea that they loved each other. And she was important enough to him that he would make Jonathan listen.

“…Alright. For Nancy.”

“Good. We’ll meet next Saturday? My house?”

“I…sure.”

“Excellent. My parents won’t be home, so we’ll be able to talk properly.” he said, and then paused while he internally examined that sentence. For some reason he felt like it was improper, but he dismissed the thought after a second. Jonathan would be there with him and Nancy, it’s not like he was inviting just her over with the pretext of his parents not being home.

“Okay.”

Steve turned to leave, but Jonathan stood up and grabbed his arm.

“Is she actually okay?” he asked. Steve sighed.

“No, she isn’t. I don’t know if she’s going to be okay again. She thinks about Barb all the time, and I’m running out of ways to help.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“I don’t know. I’ll let you know if I think of anything, yeah?”

Jonathan nodded. Steve wondered if there was anything Jonathan wouldn’t do for Nancy. He didn’t think there was.

“Actually…could you start hanging out with us at school? Or just her, either way.”

“Sure. Do you think that will help?”

“It’ll remind her that she didn’t fail to save everyone.”

“Right. Yeah, I can do that.”

“Alright. See you on Monday then.”

“Yeah, see you.”

Jonathan walked Steve to the door, which was awkward and made Steve feel like he was much smaller than he was. He left without much ceremony, walking swiftly back to his car. The feeling of déjà vu was strong and insistent. He felt a sudden fear that he would get behind the wheel and see the Monster reach out and pull Jonathan inside. He looked back, unable to help it, and was so relieved to see him unharmed that he smiled genuinely. He took some satisfaction in how stunned Jonathan looked.

He drove to Nancy’s to give her the news that Jonathan had the binder, unaware that the smile never quite left his face.


	3. Reunited

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jonathan gets up to speed, and everyone has an awkward conversation at Steve's house.

True to his word, Jonathan made an effort to hang out with Nancy that week at school. He’d spent Sunday devouring the binder, committing as much of it to memory as he could. It was meticulously compiled, arguments made for existence along the margins and weaknesses listed in Nancy’s careful cursive. He also spent much of Sunday night considering how Steve had behaved the day before. He’d seemed almost cautious, tentative in a way that Jonathan wasn’t used to from him. If he’d had to guess, he’d say Steve was intimidated, which was stupid.

Then again, he couldn’t stop himself from noticing the scars Steve now bore on one side of his face. He knew that he was the one who put them there, felt immense guilt when he’d seen them. He knew that he’d overreacted, even if it had been immensely satisfying at the time. And then Steve had come back to apologise and saved his life. After Jonathan had beaten the shit out of him, made marks on him that would become permanent. He wasn’t sure how else to feel but guilty if he was being honest. If Steve _was_ scared of him, or intimidated by him, it was undoubtedly because Jonathan had hurt him pretty badly. He didn’t really like that. He wasn’t sure he was comfortable with being a source of fear for anyone, especially not someone who’d saved his ass.

In any case, when he hung out with Nancy that week Steve was conveniently never around. That kind of solidified Jonathan’s conviction that Steve was scared of him. Nancy never mentioned the binder or Steve, so Jonathan took the cue and didn’t either. They talked mostly about school; she asked about his photography, he showed her some of the pictures he’d been taking. They were all completely uninspired, mostly of nature. He normally preferred to photograph people, but he felt his mind shying away from it now. The last time had been an unmitigated disaster.

It was nice, being around Nancy again. He’d kept his distance, even after the gift of the camera, feeling uncertain with Nancy and Steve’s continuing relationship about where he fit into her life. He knew she still felt something for him – he could see it every time she looked at him. He also knew that he _definitely_ still felt a lot of things for her. He hadn’t had a crush like this since primary school. Hell, he was hesitant to call it a crush. It always sounded ridiculous, even in his own head, to say that he was in love with her. But he was also pretty sure it was the truth, so that was uncomfortable. He had no idea if Steve knew about any of it, let alone the depth of Jonathan’s feelings. He had no idea how Steve could stand being around Jonathan if he had even a little bit of an idea about him and Nancy.

He was growing more and more uncertain that he’d ever known Steve at all. Sometimes he felt like Steve had become an entirely different person between Jonathan’s fist colliding with his face and the cops arriving. He didn’t exactly _dislike_ new Steve, but he wasn’t sure anymore of his footing with him. Before, it had been pretty simple: Steve was an asshole, avoid him. Now he couldn’t exactly avoid him, and considering Steve was looking after Nancy he couldn’t really be an asshole either. It threw off everything.

The week passed; he tried to take photos. None of them turned out right. He wasn’t sure why he was still trying. Will remained quiet, but was arguably doing better than Jonathan. He was definitely doing better than Mike, and Jonathan wasn’t really sure what to think about that. He’d always known that Will was resilient; that wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was how quickly he’d bounced back. He would’ve been suspicious if Will had ever been able to lie to him convincingly, but Will’s poker face was notoriously terrible so he was forced to accept that his little brother was just really, really strong.

Nancy continued to look pale and drawn, like she was never quite getting enough sleep. Steve continued to only be glimpsed around corners, fleetingly, like a ghost.

Eventually Saturday rolled around and Jonathan drove to Steve’s house, feeling like an interloper just as much as the last time he’d been there.

He walked up the path and knocked on the door with nausea hollowing the pit of his stomach. He felt out of place here, uncomfortably aware of how rich Steve’s family was, how weird it was for him to be invited here under _any_ circumstances.

“Jonathan? That you?” Steve’s voice echoed from inside the house.

“Yeah!” he called back, trying not to feel ridiculous.

“Come on in, the door’s unlocked!”

He turned the knob and walked in, carrying the binder firmly under one arm. He wandered down the entrance hallway, trying not to ogle too much at how much larger and _nicer_ it was compared to his own home. He eventually found his way to the lounge room, where Steve and Nancy were seated on a dark couch, waiting for him.

Nancy’s hands were clenched tightly together, and Steve had one hand on her thigh as though for reassurance. She looked worried. Steve looked neutral.

Jonathan put the binder on the coffee table, sat in an armchair and waited.

“So what did you think?” Nancy said quietly.

“I believe you.” Steve said.

“I do too.” Jonathan said, after a moment. Because he did. It was hard to argue with the research, especially keeping in mind that they already knew monsters existed.

“The question is, Nance, what are we going to do about it? What do you want to do about it?” Steve said. Jonathan felt a moment of pure gratitude to him for being the one to voice it. Yes, he’d read through it all and been convinced, but he wanted to know more than anything what the _plan_ was. What Nancy wanted the plan to be.

“I want to hand in all of my work, graduate early and go hunting.” she said, and her voice didn’t crack at all even if it wavered a bit.

“You want to hunt monsters? Again?” Jonathan heard himself say.

“Yes. I want to do what I can to make sure other people won’t get hurt by these things just because they don’t know what they’re dealing with.”

“What about money? How on earth are you going to fund that?” he said.

“Well, I mean. Money’s not really an issue.” Steve said, his hand going up to scratch at the back of his neck.

“What do you mean?” Nancy asked.

“Well, I’ve mentioned before to my parents that I wanted to travel. They don’t really expect much out of me, I’m the family screw up. Dad’s business is going to be taken over by my step-brother, he’s way older than me anyway. They’re giving me a lot of money for my graduation present, and Mom’s made Dad promise a stipend for me every year. It would probably keep us going indefinitely.”

“Your parents will be giving you enough money to support two people indefinitely?”

“Three people, actually. If you’re on board, of course.” Steve said, making eye contact with Jonathan for the first time in the conversation.

“I…I would need to talk to my Mom. And Will. I don’t want to make any decisions without involving them.”

“Of course.” Nancy said.

“Have you spoken to Mike about this?”

“Yeah. He’s okay with it. He thinks that this would be the only way that we could find more information about Eleven.”

Jonathan felt like he’d had the air punched out of him. If they could get Eleven back, it would help pretty much everyone Will was close to. They missed her desperately, he could see it every time he saw them. Mike had it the worst.

“Right. Yeah, fair enough.”

“Talk to them, Jonathan? It would be really good if we could have you with us.”

“So that’s it then? You’re decided?”

“Well, all I was really worried about was money. I have my gun license, Steve has a car. We can travel. We won’t go until you’ve decided what you’re doing but. I need to do this, Jonathan.”

He looked at her then, properly, and saw what had been missing for months. Nancy looked the same way she did when she’d decided she wanted to kill it, when they’d made the plan to destroy it once and for all. She looked determined and fierce and entirely like someone he wouldn’t cross. She looked alive again.

“Okay.”


	4. Secrets Kept

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Will is hiding things, Jonathan makes a decision, and Joyce gets some renewed hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter this time - occasionally a chapter will be from a POV that isn't one of the OT3 - in this case, Will.

Will knows something’s up with Jonathan, as much as he knows there’s something up with himself. He’s not stupid; he’s very aware that he brought something back with him from the Upside Down. He doesn’t know what, or how. He doesn’t know if it’s dangerous or if it’s going to go away. He’s scared, terrified even, but he doesn’t want to talk about it. There’s nothing anyone can do. The government sector that had been set up in Hawkins is gone now. There’s no one to ask for help, no experts to consult with. Will knows that even if he says something, the chances of a resolution are slim to none. So he’s made the decision to stay silent and prevent everyone else from stressing. It’s a big secret to keep, and he’s worried that one day he’ll slip up, but so far he seems to be lying to everyone pretty easily. He’s never been good at lying before. He’s grateful for the learned skill.

In any case, Jonathan isn’t hiding his own issues as well as Will is. He came home from somewhere on Saturday wound up and tense, and when Will had asked about it he’d gotten even tenser and gone to his room. Will knew enough to leave it at that – if he wants to talk he will, unless it’s something ‘unsuitable for his ears’.

On Monday night he talks.

They were all at the dinner table for once, which was still a rarity these days, when he brought it up.

“So Steve and Nancy have invited me on a roadtrip.” he said, casually, like it wasn’t unprecedented for Jonathan to get invited to anything by anyone.

“Really? When?”

“Immediately, pretty much. They want to research what happened, see if they can find some answers. Maybe help people, if they’re going through something like we did.”

“What, and drop out of school?”

“I guess? Nancy wants to find Eleven. Figure out if we can get her back.”

Mom drops her fork.

“She thinks you could?”

“Well, maybe. We’re not going to get any answers here that’s for sure.”

“Well, what about money?”

“Steve has that covered.”

Mom goes quiet. She raises her hand to her mouth. Will can see her turning it over. He doesn’t know why Eleven is so important to everyone, because he couldn’t meet her, but he knew she had to be _really_ important. Mom had mourned her like she had been her daughter. He took a sharp breath in, realising suddenly that if they’re going to research the Upside Down he might get answers for what’s happening to him.

“You should do it.” he said.

“You think so?”

“Yeah. As long as you stay safe. You might come across more monsters, right?”

“Well, I guess so. But I think we’d be alright. We killed one already.”

Will smiled at him, heart pounding. If they could get answers, he might not have to keep what’s happening to him a secret anymore. He might be okay.

“Mom?” Jonathan said, and she looked at him again.

“Do _you_ want to do this? Even with the risk?” she asked.

“Yes. I could help people. I could help Eleven. We could try and save her.” Jonathan said, and he looked like he meant it.

“You have to write us. Every week. And I want phone calls.” she said, and her voice shook.

“Will you be okay here? By yourself?” Jonathan asked, and Will could hear the other questions in the underneath: _are you stable enough to handle this? will your income be enough?_

“Yes, yes, of course. Hopper might be coming to stay for a while soon anyway.” she said, and Will and Jonathan exchanged looks at that. They had known that she was dating Hopper, and that it had been going well, but not _that_ well. Will wouldn’t even mind Hopper being in the house. It would be reassuring to know a cop had his back.

Later, after dinner, he heard Mom and Jonathan talking in hushed tones in her room. He couldn’t make out anything, but he hoped it was a good conversation. He’d do anything at that point for answers. He never thought he’d get any, and the glimpse of hope is almost too much.

He goes to his room and does his homework. It’s a quiet night, and he’s struck with how lucky he is – with how much everyone did to get him back. Every so often, when it gets too quiet, he remembers how close he was to death in the Upside Down. How close he’d come to giving up, just letting the monster take him so that he wouldn’t have to feel the cold anymore, feel his lungs hurting with each breath he took.

He doesn’t talk about it. He doesn’t want to make everyone worry.


	5. Preparation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which planning begins.

Nancy feels a little better after talking to Jonathan. She can’t deny that it was strange to see him in Steve’s house, and to see him and Steve interacting so peacefully. She still doesn’t know if Steve still dislikes Jonathan, or if he knows how Nancy feels about him. She loves Steve – she can’t quite believe just how much he stepped up to the plate the night that it all happened, or that he’s continued to be the kind of supportive and loving boyfriend that he is. She’d thought, when they started dating, that he was the kind of guy she’d always have a bantering relationship with; prodding at each other with sarcasm and teasing. She hadn’t expected him to be the kind of guy she actually could see herself spending the rest of her life with.

And then there’s Jonathan, who she still feels so much for. She knows it isn’t fair on either of them, to have feelings for both of them and not be ‘giving’ herself fully to one or the other. She knows that it’s not good for her either, to be torn in two directions. But she’s put the whole issue into a carefully locked box in her head for another time. She has too much to deal with just _living_ right now to tackle the complexities of her love life.

She mulls over the whole thing in her head, carefully, after they talked. Nancy’s comfortable with the plan that she has. She knows that she wants to figure out what happened to Eleven. She knows that she _needs_ to know what the world is really like, and what’s actually out there. And she knows that she can’t let more people die like Barb did if she can do something about it. She’s spent an uncomfortable amount of time thinking about what it would have been like to be Barb in that moment. To die, not knowing what had killed you or why it had happened. To die wondering how it could be, when you had been safe just moments before. Nancy had nearly died herself, of course, but she had at least known that she had been dealing with _something_ not human. Barb had just been sitting there, alone, abandoned by her best friend. And then she had been dead.

She had explained to Steve earlier that week _why_ it was so important to her to save people, and he had just nodded. She’d asked him – haltingly, because she wasn’t sure what she’d do if he said no – if he was sure he wanted to spend his money on hunting down monsters with her (and possibly Jonathan).

_“I don’t think I could spend it on anything else now,” he’d said, and she’d been a little surprised at that._

_“Why?”_

_“Knowing what I know now – that monsters exist, that people die every day because of them – I don’t think I could live with myself if I just kept doing nothing. She was your best friend, Nance, but she was at my house when it happened. I shouldn’t have left her alone. I’m not going to do it again.”_

_“Is that why you turned around? Is that why you came back into the house? Because you’d figured out something had happened to Barb, and you felt guilty?”_

_“There are a lot of reasons why I came back into the house. That’s just one of them.”_

But when she had pressed, he’d refused to elaborate. He’d shifted down into that introspective, still mood again, and she didn’t want to push him. She wasn’t so self-centred that she didn’t realise that she wasn’t the only one traumatised by what had happened, but she didn’t know how to support Steve the way he was supporting her.

Steve hangs out with her on Monday, and Jonathan is conspicuously absent considering he spent the last week with her. She doesn’t let herself think about the possibility of him saying no.

On Tuesday morning, Steve is leaning up against her locker, distracting her with inane talk about how one of his classmates hadn’t known what a soliloquy was even though they’d been covering Macbeth for the last month. She’s half paying attention, yawning, when Steve stiffens. She follows his gaze over her shoulder and turns around, and Jonathan is standing behind her, looking anxious and a little pale.

“I’m in,” he says, and she hugs him immediately, can’t help herself. She loves Steve and she knows that it’s terrible but she loves Jonathan a little too – okay, maybe a lot – and this way she can have both her boys with her. She doesn’t have to do this alone, and if she’s honest with herself, she wouldn’t even consider taking anyone else with her. These are the boys – the men – that she faced Hell with. These are the only people she really trusts with her life.

She pulls back, and she’s so relieved that she can feel herself tearing up. She swallows, takes a breath. Calms herself.

“Thank you,” she says, and Jonathan glances up and makes eye contact for a second before looking away again.

“You’re welcome. Uh, so. When is this happening?”

Nancy looks back to Steve, who’s still leaning up against her locker. He licks his lips, his hand going up to his hair in what she recognises as one of his nervous gestures.

“This is your show, Nance. If we’re really doing this, it’s up to you when we leave.”

“We need to gather supplies, make sure we’ve got everything we need. I’ve got a list at home – um, can you guys come over tonight? We can go over it, figure out who’s grabbing what.”

“Yeah, I can do that. I haven’t got work tonight.” Jonathan says. Steve nods.

“Okay. I guess that’s that for now.”

The bell for class rings and they have to quickly part ways, but Nancy struggles to pay attention for the rest of the day. There’s a thrumming in her chest, like she’s just gotten a jump of adrenaline, and she knows that this is the start of something big – something life-changing.


End file.
